October 6, 2013 2:22pm EDTOctober 5, 2013 11:07pm EDTHelp from his defense gets John Lackey out of a first-inning jam against the Rays. After that, it's all Boston as the Red Sox inch closer to advancing in the postseason. SN's Jesse Spector has the details.

BOSTON -- Game 2 of the American League division series had not gotten off to a good start for Boston Red Sox righthander John Lackey. He had thrown 14 pitches, only eight of which were strikes, and the Tampa Bay Rays had runners on first and second with one out and their best hitter, Evan Longoria, at the plate.

On the first pitch of the at-bat, the Rays' third baseman tapped a ground ball to his opposite number, Will Middlebrooks. A couple of steps to the bag and a throw across the diamond later, Lackey was out of trouble, and by the time he returned to the mound, he had a two-run lead.

"Lack made a great pitch," Middlebrooks said. "He had a feeling that he was gonna be swinging, and he threw a little cutter, got him out in front. He rolled it over to me."

The Red Sox went on to a 7-4 victory to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, giving Boston a chance to complete the sweep on Monday in Florida. Because of the Red Sox's relentless attack, highlighted by a pair of David Ortiz home runs, it may have felt like an easy ride to victory. It was anything but that, and as good as Boston's lineup has been in two games, the difference has been in the field.

Lackey said that his "command just was kind of hit or miss for pretty much the whole time I was out there." In 5.1 innings, he allowed four runs on seven hits with three walks and six strikeouts, throwing 62 of 95 pitches for strikes. The pitch to Longoria in the first inning was one of the most important ones that he made all night. A base hit in that situation would have given the Rays an early lead and gotten Lackey into even more pitch-count trouble than he wound up encountering through a game where the rust of not having pitched since Sept. 24 was highly evident.

The Red Sox turned two more double plays in the game, getting out of a situation in the seventh inning when Tampa Bay had the tying runs on base with one out, and in the eighth when the Rays had the tying run at the plate.

"This is as good a defense as I've ever pitched for," said reliever Craig Breslow, who escaped the jam in the seventh inning when he got Ben Zobrist to hit into a 4-6-3 twin killing. "Maybe the guys aren't the flashiest, so it often gets overlooked, but they make all the routine plays and then some. You feel so confident that as soon as the ball hits the ground, it's going to be converted to an out."

Or maybe two outs. The Red Sox have made all the plays in the field that they have needed to make through two games, while the Rays will remember their trip to Boston for the Wil Myers gaffe that sparked a five-run Red Sox rally in Game 1, throwing errors by Jose Molina and Zobrist that gave extra bases to Boston and put more pressure on David Price in Game 2, and a cavalcade of caroms off the Green Monster that proved difficult to chase down.

"They took advantage of the quirks," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "We did not, and they got on top. I thought David had really good stuff, right up to the last pitch. Just had a really good seventh inning, and all of a sudden hangs a baseball to Ortiz and scores another run. It was kind of a weird night the way everything set up for them and against us."

Maddon did not mean to imply any unfairness, other than from the baseball gods, who granted Jacoby Ellsbury a broken-bat single and a cue-shot RBI double in his first two at-bats. Both times, Ellsbury came around to score, making for three runs that he helped produce as a result of good fortune. The final margin, of course, was three runs.

But at the same time, fortune favors the bold. In the third inning, Ellsbury scored when Dustin Pedroia hit a potential double play ball that Shane Victorino broke up with a hard slide at second base, taking out Zobrist. The next inning, Jonny Gomes hit a grounder to third base, and when Zobrist tried to turn the relay from Longoria, he threw the ball off the roof of the Red Sox dugout, allowing Gomes to go to second base. Gomes scored when Stephen Drew hit a triple off the Green Monster that would have been a routine flyout in most other ballparks.

The Red Sox got the outs they needed to get, and the Rays did not. That is how Price became the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 1999 to pitch at least seven innings and give up at least seven runs in a playoff game. "That's kind of what you saw there," Maddon said. "Not necessarily that David was bad." And that is how the Red Sox headed south with a victory that seemed much more comfortable than it really was.